Why should companies be on social media : Part 2 : United Airlines Guitar Scandal
August 17th, 2009 | 
Author: In an attempt to explain why companies need Social Media Branding we started a series last week. The series will comprise of cases where Social Media has affected companies/brands/individuals in a good or bad manner. Last time we posted the case of the United Airlines Stock Crash case, incidentally this time also we post a story which is concerned with United Airlines.
The Case : A Canadian guy travels on a United Airlines flight, but on reaching his destination he sees that his guitar had been damaged by the airline personnel. He pursued the airlines for an year for the damages but when he saw there was no response from them, he put up a video on Youtube which said “United Breaks Guitars”. Being a musician himself he composed a nice song and it became an instant hit. See video :
Effect : When the video views reached 50,000, United Airlines contacted the person and paid him damages and tried to hush up the case. But it had been quite late by then, the net’s a Virus. The video had spread virally to all corners of the world already.
Result : Although United Airlines cleaned up the mistake but now the incident has become one of the most talked about incidents in the Social Media Industry. With the story on CNN and the video reaching a massive 4,000,000+ views the Airline has taken a bashing already. What worsens up the matter is that even if google for United Airlines, you get a first page result of the youtube video “United Breaks Guitars”.
Point to Learn : If you are a service oriented company, you ought to listen to your customers. Had this incident happened a decade ago, it would have never come into limelight as not everyone approaches the media. But in this present scenario, when nobody is out of media, everybody has the power to spread the word and it can really bring more damages as this new form of media has empowered the customers and the best thing is that this is un-censored.
Don’t underestimate the new age customer and the new media – Social Media.
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Posted in Business, Internet Power, customers, social media, zapylacz | 
Tags: internet, social media, united airlines, why social media
good to hear this…
may be in country like ours it can bear more fruits coz here most incidents go unnoticed and unheard of.
even high profile cases end up at India Gate with a few hundred people holding candles .
this is more consistent , may be more effective….
internet is one of the greatest strengths ….
let it be explored in a way which is entertaining , empowering and true.
companies in India especially the PSU set up in India can only be forced to work this way…
once they realize the potent power of internet based image building may be they will work towards…
till that day the concept of social media branding in the majority of public sector is a far fetched dream…
one more important point to note:
SHASHI THAROOR
MOS, External Affiars has been advised not to use twitter in the institutional campus of the government as it is considered to cause some internet security issues …
dont know whether right or not …
Thanks for the comments abhisht, that’s very true, in a country like ours it can be very effective, and more so because even the traditional media here is not true always or often censored.
the Indian Govt/PSU sector I guess is a distant dream I guess, let’s first make the Pvt sector understand this, a decade later to the Govt sector
Regarding the Shashi Tharoor case:
News spread : Shashi tharoor(@shashitharoor) not allowed to tweet because he’s an MP
Reality : He was asked not to use official net for social networking sites.
Fact : he uses his mobile to tweet. quite a few MP’s asking him about twitter.
Traditional Media can make any story turn it’s way. The Social Media won’t.